Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

  Someone had ripped the receiver off one of the telephones. A man was talking on the other. “I don’t know,” he was saying. “What do you want to do?” With his free hand he hitched up his pants, wriggling his flabby hips to assist the process. “Naw,” he said, “I don’t want to go there again. They’re all a bunch of assholes.… All right, all right, not Charlie. Charlie’s not an asshole. He’s a douche-bag.” The man laughed. “Just kidding, paisan. Charlie’s a real paisan. You’re a paisan. I’m a paisan. We’re all a shitload of fucking paisans, just itching for a little you know what, right? Am I right or am I right?” The man listened to the reply. Then he said, “So, you’re bored, I’m bored, what do you want to do?”

  Nina tapped him on the shoulder. “I need to use the phone,” she said.

  The man turned very slowly and looked down on her. He had long greasy hair and needed a shave. “Unlax, Fuddsy,” he said. “No, no, Zimmy, I’m not talking to you. I’ve got a very impatient customer here who doesn’t give an apparent shit for my constitutional right to converse with you.”

  “I’m about to have a baby, you jerk,” Nina said.

  The man’s eyes ran down her body. They widened. “Zimmy? I’ll call you back.” He hung up, ran his eyes down Nina’s body again and walked rapidly away, glancing back once, but briefly—lest he be turned to a pillar of salt, or something.

  Nina dialed Dr. Berry’s number. A woman who might have done the voice-overs for Betty Crocker answered. “Just a minute please, dear,” she said, and called, “Jim. Jim.”

  Opera played in the background. Dr. Berry came to the phone, humming “Salut Demeure, Chaste et Pure.” “Hello,” he said.

  “It’s Nina Kitchener, Dr. Berry. I think the baby’s coming.”

  “When’s your due date?”

  “Next Thursday.”

  “No problem,” said Dr. Berry. “How far apart are your contractions?”

  “How far apart?”

  “Approximately.”

  “In time, you mean?”

  “That’s right. You’re not timing them?”

  “I forgot. But I think my water broke. I know it did.”

  “Splendid,” said Dr. Berry. “Get to the hospital. I’ll meet you there and we’ll see what’s what.”

  Nina hung up and looked around for Suze. There was a squad car parked halfway down the block. Suze was talking to the driver, gesturing wildly. When Nina arrived Suze turned to her and said, “There are no fucking cabs. And this guy’s balking at doing his sworn duty.”

  The cop inside peered up at Nina. He’d been shaving for maybe three months and still had adolescent pimples on his cheeks. “I’m on a stakeout,” he said in a high voice. “I can’t just up and leave.” He regarded Nina more closely. “Maybe I can radio for an ambulance.”

  “Stakeout shmakeout!” Suze screamed at him. “And an ambulance could take an hour. You know it, I know it, the whole fucking town knows it. What are you, from Omaha Flats, for Christ’s sake? Now open up and get us to the hospital pronto.”

  “But it’s my first crack bust,” the cop pleaded.

  “Sure, sure,” Suze said. “But tomorrow the paper will say ‘Mom Has Baby on Street While Rookie Cop Panics.’ And then we’ll sue you and the city up and down till you can’t even get hired by the goddamn Sanitation Department. Your life will be over, boychick, with a capital O.”

  The cop unlocked the doors, let them in and sped off. “Hit the siren,” Suze commanded.

  He hit the siren. They flew uptown on a wailing carpet of sound. Nina had another contraction, much stronger than the ones before. This time the line between discomfort and pain was approached. She took Suze’s hand. When the contraction eased, Nina said, “You’re behaving like the ditziest father in the worst screwball comedy ever made.”

  “Screwball,” said Suze, giving Nina’s hand a squeeze. She raised her voice. “Screwfuckingball. Doesn’t that just say it all?”

  The cop glanced back at them in the rearview mirror. Nina had never before seen naked terror in a man’s eyes. She saw it now. Then her womb twisted again. “Jesus,” she said. She felt sweat pop out on her brow.

  “Is it on the way?” Suze asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I mean right now.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The cop put the pedal to the floor.

  “Oh shit,” Nina said.

  “What now?”

  “I forgot to look at the time.”

  “What difference does that make?” Suze asked. “Anything on your schedule will have to go on hold, for God’s sake.”

  “Here comes another,” Nina said. This time she kept her eyes on her watch. The contraction lasted thirty-one seconds. The next one began two minutes and forty-three seconds later.

  Suze pounded on the bars that separated them from the driver. “Can’t you make this shitbox move?” she yelled.

  “I’m trying, I’m trying,” the cop said, hunched over the wheel and almost in tears.

  At the hospital there were forms to fill out. Nina sat in a chair. Suze stood behind her. “This person is going to have a baby any second,” she said. “Can’t the paperwork wait?”

  “No,” said the nurse, chewing gum. She took the forms from Nina. “Have you taken a childbirth course?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Nina replied, not going into detail.

  “Good. Then we’ll put you in a birthing room on the fourth floor. “Where’s your coach?”

  “Right here,” said Nina.

  “What?” said Suze.

  The birthing room had a hospital bed, a chair and a TV. The TV was on. Julia Child was cooking ris de veau. The director was fond of shooting overhead closeups of the ris de veau hissing on the stove. “Turn it off,” Nina said.

  “Really?” said Suze. “I think she’s mesmerizing.” But she turned it off.

  A nurse looked in. “Had our enema yet?” she asked.

  Half an hour later, Nina had had their enema and lay on the bed, flattened by contraction after contraction. Suze stood on the other side of the room, biting her lip and occasionally looking over at the blank TV screen. Dr. Berry walked in, followed by a black nurse twice his size. He wore a red cashmere sweater and green tweed pants and was growing a snow-white beard; now he resembled not so much one of Santa’s helpers as Santa himself, on his day off.

  “Well well well,” he said.

  “Am I glad to see you,” Nina replied. “This is my friend Suze.”

  Dr. Berry shook his head admiringly. “I can see that everything’s under control. You two aren’t going to need me at all.”

  “Oh yes we are,” Suze said.

  Dr. Berry laughed, but his eyes were on Nina and he said: “Got one coming on now, have you?”

  Nina, crossing quickly over the discomfort line, could only nod. Dr. Berry laid his hand on her belly; his touch was calm, sure, gentle, but it didn’t take the pain away. He didn’t speak while the contraction lasted. Then he said: “Good, good. You’re not in hard labor yet, of course, but it’s a nice start.”

  “She’s not?”

  “I’m not?”

  “Ha ha,” said Dr. Berry, as though he were an out-of-towner come to Broadway for sophisticated repartee and getting his money’s worth. He washed his hands and carefully slipped one inside Nina, cocking an ear like a hunter listening for distant game. “I remember this cervix,” he said. “This is going to be a cakewalk.” He turned to the nurse. “Three centimeters.”

  “Will you be at home or Beefsteak Charlie’s?” asked the nurse.

  “Home, I think,” said Dr. Berry. “I had a big dinner already.”

  “You’re leaving?” asked Nina.

  Dr. Berry smiled. “You’re doing great, for first stage. Three centimeters! But you don’t need me hanging around till you’re fully dilated.”

  “How much is fully?” Suze asked.

  “Ten centimeters,” Dr. Berry answered.

  “What’s that in inches?”<
br />
  Dr. Berry laughed again. He was shaking his head with amusement as he went out the door.

  The nurse came forward. “You can stay for now,” she said to Suze, “but you’ll have to leave when we get to second stage.”

  “Why?” Nina said.

  “That’s the rule. No friends in the room during delivery.”

  “But she’s my coach.”

  The nurse swung slowly around to Suze. “She is?”

  Suze nodded vigorously.

  “Then you’ll have to get gowned,” the nurse said. “Down the hall, third door on the right.”

  Suze left. The nurse consulted a clipboard. She made a few tick marks with a pencil, then said: “Should I order up an epidural for later?”

  Stick it in me now, Nina thought. From the moment she had walked out of the childbirth class she had never considered anesthetic-free labor. But she said to the nurse: “Let’s see how it goes.”

  Then she was seized by a contraction that seemed to turn the entire force of her body against her. Nina was hardly aware of the nurse’s hand on her stomach. She tried to remember sniff-and-blow, huff-huff-and-puffing. In the end she settled on drawing in deep breaths and letting them out in long, even exhalations. It might have helped a little.

  “Not bad,” the nurse said, withdrawing her hand. “That’s the kind that does a quarter of a centimeter all by itself.”

  “A quarter?”

  The nurse smiled a knowing smile. “Think about that epidural,” she said. “Everyone ends up having it, even you natural childbirth types.”

  I’m not a natural childbirth type, Nina thought, but she couldn’t get the words out before the next contraction hit.

  Ten hours later there was a new nurse, bigger than the other one, in the room, breakfasting on a peanut butter sandwich; Suze’s spiked hair was drooping over her forehead and she had purple smudges under her eyes; Dr. Berry was back, wearing a fine tweed jacket; the epidural had still not been ordered; and Nina was nine-and-a-half centimeters dilated. She had learned all there was to learn about controlling pain through breathing, which was that it didn’t help much, and she had learned that birth, like any other struggle for independence, hurt. She had also learned that Suze thought she was a stubborn asshole, had thought so all these years. “Order that fucking epidural,” she had said one of the times they were alone in the room, “or I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Let’s see how it goes.”

  “It’s going terribly, you blockhead. It couldn’t be worse. Why are you doing this?”

  But Nina didn’t know, and she didn’t have to explain at that moment because another contraction had started and they had agreed not to talk during contractions.

  “Just a couple more,” said Dr. Berry. “Then we’ll be cooking with gas.”

  A couple more happened. After they passed, “epidural” was the only word in Nina’s mind. Then she remembered tune tapping. The only tune she could think of was “Salut Demeure.” She began tapping her finger to it, although the song seemed to have no beat at all and she didn’t know the words. A contraction like a rapidly expanding beach ball struck her. “Sing fucking ‘Salut Demeure,’” she screamed at Dr. Berry.

  Dr. Berry blinked. “Chaste et Pure?” he said.

  “Yes, yes.”

  Dr. Berry sang “Salut Demeure Chaste et Pure.” He had a light, trained tenor, which he reined in at half-voice. Nina was fully dilated by the end of the aria. She lay on the bed, her hospital gown in disarray, panting, drenched in sweat, chewing ice shavings that Suze kept bringing by the cupful because she had noticed a father-coach collecting some down the hall a few hours before.

  “Do you like Puccini?” Dr. Berry asked. “Or is he too schmaltzy for you?” Nina, feeling the first knotting of a coming contraction, didn’t answer. “I hope I’m pronouncing it properly,” said Dr. Berry, sounding worried for the first time.

  While Nina endured the pain, Suze said: “She’s not Jewish—I am. And how else would you pronounce it? Schmaltzy, schmaltzy, schmaltzy. It couldn’t be simpler. Christ.”

  Dr. Berry looked stricken. “I’m sorry if I’ve given offense,” he said.

  “Just sing,” Suze told him.

  “Puccini?”

  Nina, coming out of the contraction, said, “That would be nice.”

  Dr. Berry reached inside her. “Positioned perfectly.”

  “You can feel him?” Nina said.

  “Or her,” Dr. Berry replied. “Lined up like a little trooper.”

  Dr. Berry began with “Non Piangere, Liù,” then ran through Tosca: “Recondita Armonia,” “E Lucevan le Stelle,” “O Dolci Mani.” By that time the muscles in Nina’s body were wringing her apart; the nurse was holding one of her legs and Suze the other. Blood came out of her in gobbets, dribbles, gushes; enough, she thought between contractions, to impress even Le Boucher.

  “I could knock them dead with this act downtown,” she said, hearing how hoarse her voice sounded.

  “What?” said Suze looking up, a streak of blood on the side of her nose.

  The next contraction came before Nina could reply. It dwarfed all the others. “Don’t push, don’t push,” cried the nurse. Suze was squeezing her leg with all her strength but Nina could hardly feel it.

  “The epidural,” Nina said, panting. “Give me the goddamn epidural.”

  Dr. Berry, sailing into “Nessun Dorma,” peered between her legs and broke off in mid-note. “Too late,” he said. “We’re crowning. See?”

  Suze peered in too. “That?”

  “That,” said Dr. Berry.

  Nina’s heart rate rose to another level, something she would have thought impossible. “Is something wrong with the baby?”

  “Looks just fine,” said Dr. Berry. “Push on the next one. We’re coming down the stretch.”

  Nina pushed on the next one, and the next and the next. “Push, honey, that’s it,” said the nurse. Nina pushed with all her might. She felt Suze stroking her leg.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  Suze looked at her. There were tears in Suze’s eyes, and love too, as easy to read as if the four letters had lit up in her irises. “You’re a horse, Nina. Just a fucking horse.”

  “One more time,” said Dr. Berry.

  Nina pushed one more time, a push that ended in a tremendous slide of relief. “Bravo!” said Dr. Berry, holding up a bloodstained baby boy.

  Nina tried to sit up, and almost did. “Is he all right?”

  “Perfect,” said Dr. Berry.

  Tears ran down Nina’s face, but she was laughing at the same time. Dr. Berry handed the baby to the nurse who took him to the other side of the room.

  Nina stopped laughing. “But he’s not crying or anything.”

  “What’s there to cry about?” said Dr. Berry. “He’s breathing. That’s what counts.”

  His last word triggered a thought. “Suze! Count his fingers and toes.”

  “Ten of each,” said Suze. She leaned over and kissed Nina on the forehead.

  “What a good coach,” said the nurse. “You’ve done this before, I can see.” Then she held out the baby, all cleaned up, for Nina to take. Nina was afraid. He was so small, with stick arms and legs and tiny features on his tiny face; but his eyes, blue eyes that seemed very big, were looking right at her. It was so simple. He needed to be held, and she was the holder. Nina took the baby, not with exaggerated delicacy as though he were made of Limoges, but as though she had been handling newborns all her life, and laid him on her breast. She felt the movement of his little lips, and shifted her nipple between them. He took it and tried to suck.

  “Will you look at that?” said Dr. Berry. “This one’s going to be a real killer-diller.”

  Nina held the baby. She stroked his fine hair, which was surprisingly long in the back and so blond it was almost white. The next time she became aware of her surroundings, she realized that everyone had gone.

  She looked down at her baby. He was looki
ng right at her again, with serious blue eyes that were the eyes, or so she thought, of someone who was trying to show her that he was always going to hold up his end. This was no Henrik. This was a human being who needed a serious name. But she still couldn’t think of one.

  “What’s your name, little boy?” she asked.

  Nina gazed down at him again. Now his eyes were closed. A momentary jolt of panic shook her, but before she could shout for the nurse, she felt the breath from his nostrils on her skin. Nina stroked his fine blond hair and hummed, very softly, one of the tunes that Dr. Berry had sung. He kept breathing on her breast, breaths that were tiny, but as steady as the ebb and flow of the tide. The universe shrank until it fit comfortably inside the little birthing room on the fourth floor.

  12

  “Are we the most fucked-up generation the world has ever known?” Suze asked the next day.

  “Of course not,” Nina replied, lying on the bed in her private room on the maternity ward, with the baby sleeping beside her.

  “What’s the competition?”

  “The last of the dinosaurs.”

  “Dinosaurs,” said Suze. “That’s an idea. How about Rex?”

  “Rex?”

  “Doesn’t grab? What about Marley?”

  “Marley? Marley Kitchener?”

  “After Bob Marley. You love Bob Marley.”

  “I love Thelonious Monk too.”

  They both eyed the baby. He didn’t look like a Thelonious. “Mrs. Monk must have been an interesting woman,” Suze said.

  A messenger entered bearing bouquets of roses, orchids and dahlias, and a bottle of Roederer Cristal. There was a card from Jason, signed by everyone at the office, with a picture of a dam bursting and the caption, “Everything copacetic in your absence. Have a great time.”

  Nina and Suze drank the champagne. “Guess who I’m having dinner with tonight?” Suze asked.

  “Dr. Berry?”

  “Very funny.”

  “His wife?”

  “That’s nasty, but a little closer. I’m dining with Le Boucher.”